Think your kids will lose ground when schools close for snow? Think again.

A new Harvard study found that weather-related school closures have little impact on students’ performance, but delayed openings might.

No word on how snow days affect the parents’ ability to get any kind of meaningful work done, but I’d put it at about a 20% chance of scattered conference calls with loudly sighs.

The study of Massachusetts school districts found that, simply put, it’s better to close down the school for snow than to keep it open and suffer the subsequent transportation-related student absences, because it’s harder to catch up a few students that it is to tack on school days at the end of the year.

How easy it’ll be when the kiddos are still in school as the Fourth of July celebrations begin was not studied.

As a result, superintendents might want to err on the side of closure when a snowstorm approaches.

Parents, on the other hand, might want to chuck the XBox, that singing toy with no OFF button, and the child who left the dinner leftovers on the counter all day into a snowdrift.